10 places around the world where US influence has plummeted

Chinese President Xi Jinping on a visit to South Africa in 2015. China has been replacing the US as the main foreign power in Africa and elsewhere around the world. Themba Hadebe/AP

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US became the sole superpower on the world stage, and was able to take advantage of the vast global influence it had amassed since the late 19th century.

But in recent years, this power has been fading.

From the South China Sea to the Middle East to Latin America, places where the US once comfortably exerted its economic, military, and political power are slowly beginning to slip out of America's grip, and often into China's. Although former President Barack Obama initiated this trend in some regions through calculated disengagement, it has accelerated sharply under President Donald Trump.

Here are 10 regions where US influence has faded most dramatically:

1/

The South China Sea

Chinese dredging vessels aiding in construction work near one of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Handout/US Navy via Reuters

The strategic and oil-rich South China Sea is one of the most contested waterways in the world, and the US and its allies have competed with China for control of it for years. While the Obama administration took a tough stance on the issue and even forced China to back down from further expansion in the area in 2016, the Trump administration has instead pursued other priorities.

While on his trip to Asia this month, Trump articulated a largely incoherent policy on the South China Sea together with Vietnam and Philippines, but focused mainly on trade and North Korea. As a result, China has had a much freer hand in asserting its dominance in the region, and has expanded military bases, strengthened missile shelters, and built up small reefs into developed islands from which it can project its maritime influence — all to the detriment of US power in the area.

Vietnam and China recently reached an agreement on the sea, and China's foreign minister indicated it was a sign that the countries in the region did not trust the US anymore to resolve such disputes.

2/

The Pacific

A Japanese flag flies in Yokohama as cargo ships come into port. Access to Japanese markets was one of the incentives for the US to stay in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Yuriko Nakao/Reuters

The US has long had a powerful military and economic presence in the Pacific, and Obama had hoped to create even closer ties between the US and east Asia through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The controversial agreement was also seen as an effort to counter expanding Chinese trade power in the region.

In one of his first moves in office, though, Trump decided to pull the US out of the agreement. In response, the remaining 11 countries that signed onto the TPP formed their own pact without the US earlier this month, cutting the US out of potentially profitable export opportunities and diminishing its influence along the crucial Pacific Rim.

"It's a huge setback for the United States," Deborah Elms, the executive director of the Asian Trade Center, told Voice of America. "If you are an exporter this is deeply damaging."

US Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank Robert Orr agreed.

"When Trump abdicated TPP and then told regional nations to go on their own as the US would, it was inevitable that a new formulation of TPP would emerge not only without American leadership, but also without even an American presence," he said.

3/

The Philippines

America's deep historical ties to the Philippines stretch back to the 1898 Spanish-American War, when the US acquired the islands from Spain. Since then, the US has maintained bases in the Philippines, and has enjoyed immense cultural and political influence on the islands.

Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (L) with then-secretary of state John Kerry (R) in Washington, DC, in May 2013.
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Along with Israel, Turkey has been considered the most reliable US ally in the Middle East for decades, and has been a crucial member of the NATO alliance since 1952.

Yet few of America's ally relationships have become as strained as the one with Turkey in recent years. Peeved by America's escalating diplomatic chastisement of its authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the US's continued support for Kurds in Syria, Turkey has diverged from the US on numerous regional issues.

China in particular has stepped up to the plate in Africa, and the value of its investments on the continent outweigh America's by a factor of 10. While the Obama administration had at least tried, unsuccessfully, to expand its reach in Africa from a security standpoint, the Trump administration, which has slashed foreign aid funding, has been "asleep at the wheel" according to Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle. Other officials like former US representative to the African Union Reuben Brigety, agree.

"The most disturbing thing is they are looking beyond us at this point," Brigety told US News and World Report. "As [African countries] are getting their act increasingly together… They are no longer waiting for us to figure out what we may be doing."

While Americans and Europeans often viewed Africa from a security lens, the Chinese have used state-owned corporations to entrench China's geopolitical influence on the continent through industrial, infrastructure, and mining projects.

Latin America

The US has also increasingly become outpaced by China in Latin America, right in the US's backyard.

As the US has devoted its attention to other regions of the world, China has stepped in to fill the void economically, and has now replaced the US as the main trading partner of regional giants like Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. Militarily, China has also been angling itself as a weapons provider in Latin America, and its developing Pacific navy may well come to play a role in Pacific South America in years to come.

Following years of American involvement, the countries of Latin America formed a new international group called the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that excludes the US and Canada — and instead of meeting on the American continent, CELAC held a major conference in Beijing in 2015, according to CNN Money.

Evan Ellis, a Latin American expert and professor at the US Army War College, told CNN that like in other parts of the world, China is offering investment and trade benefits with no strings attached.

"China provides a source of financing and export markets without pressures to adhere to practices of transparency, open markets, and Western style democracy," Ellis said.

All of this is very appealing to Latin American countries like Venezuela, among others.

7/

Europe

A gas pipeline runs near Donetsk, Ukraine from Russia to the European Union, 2015.
Andrew Burton/Getty Images

When the US passed a new sanctions bill against Russia this past July, it included a clause that said Congress could also levy sanctions against companies that worked on Russian export pipelines — and the Germans, whose companies are planning to do just that on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline, erupted in protest.

President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said the EU was prepared to retaliate economically against the US for the moves.

The diplomatic awkwardness on the energy issue reflects an increasing distance Germany and the European Union have felt toward the US ever since the Obama years — Europeans' trust of the US has fallen by more than half since 2009, and more recently, politicians in western Europe have complained about Trump's refugee policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up Europe's increasing distance from the US in May of this year.

"The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days" she said. "We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands."

8/

The Arab Middle East

In 2009, Obama made a sweeping speech in Cairo that promised a new future for the Middle East, and especially for the Arab nations that make up its core. At the height of the Arab Spring two years later, it seemed like the US had committed itself to use its power in the region to advance Arab democratic interests.

Yet in 2017, from Iraq in the east to Lebanon and Jordan in the west, it is no secret that US influence in the Arab Middle East is at historic lows. Iranian regional dominance in the Fertile Crescent and Yemen, instability in Saudi Arabia, and the continuing appeal of Islamism over Western liberalism all mean that America's ability to direct politics in the region has become seriously undermined.

After decades of American interventionism in the Arab Middle East that have borne little fruit, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani recently stated that if Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal, "no one will trust America again."

However Arabs' distrust of the US has deeper causes than just American waffling on deals like the one with Iran — Obama's inaction on Syria, which many Arabs saw as a betrayal, along with America's continued singular focus on stamping out terrorism in the region have dampened hopes that the US has ever had the best interests of Arabs in mind.

Mainland southeast Asia

A logo at the entrance to a joint industrial zone between China and Thailand east of Bangkok in 2016.
Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

The US has long strived to maintain influence on the southeast Asian mainland, perhaps most directly through the Vietnam War, and has frequently served as a bulwark in the region against China.

This bulwark seems to be weakening though, and China has been rapidly supplanting US influence throughout the region by investing heavily where Americans will not. While in past decades human rights and democracy had to be cultivated in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia for the US to do business there, with Trump stepping back and downplaying the importance of human rights on his recent Asia trip, southeast Asian nations have been given a freer hand — and in many cases have turned to China as a partner instead due to its strategic economic know-how.

China has long sought deeper involvement in the affairs of countries in its own backyard, and America's disengagement on issues like the South China Sea have allowed it to unilaterally extend political and economic influence over southeast Asian countries on the mainland.

Among locals though, Chinese influence isn't necessarily a good thing. A recent survey conducted from Singapore showed that 70% ofsSoutheast Asians see US influence as positive for regional stability, however 51% also stated that the US had lost power in the region to China since Trump took office.

10/

Pakistan

A banner of Chinese President Xi Jinping (center) flanked by Pakistan's President Mamnoon Hussain (L) and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (R) during Xi's visit marking the launch of the construction of an economic corridor in Pakistan in May, 2017.
B.K. Bangash/AP

The US and Pakistan have been ardent allies throughout the Cold War and into the War on Terror, but recent political differences and the growing influence of China in the country have strained American power in the south Asian country.

Pakistan, which has been India's arch-rival since 1947, has instead turned to China, just like so many other tepid US allies around the world. Pakistan's top foreign policy advisor Sartaj Aziz indicated as much in June of this year.

"Pakistan's relations with China are the cornerstone of our foreign policy," Aziz said.